Employees on strike at military bases in Kingston and Petawawa will hold rallies in Ottawa Tuesday to highlight the ongoing labour disputes.

The first rally will be held at the Corps of Commissionaires headquarters at 100 Gloucester Street at 8 a.m. and involve striking commissionaires from CFB Kingston. The second rally will be held two hours later by striking cleaners from CFB Petawawa and will focus on the Ottawa headquarters of GDI Integrated Services on Industrial Road.

Commissionaires who provide security at the Canadian Forces Base in Kingston are entering their second month on strike, since walking off the job on June 24. Eighty-five are on strike.

The 83 cleaners, employed by GDI for work at the Petawawa base, have been on strike since July 24.

The worker’s union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, says that GDI is demanding a number of concessions, including to health and safety provisions, benefits and staffing levels. “GDI has failed to honour its previous contract obligations and the cuts they are demanding would further deteriorate the working standards of these hard-working cleaners,” Sharon DeSousa, PSAC Ontario Regional Executive Vice-President, said in a statement.

To further pressure GDI to return to the bargaining table and negotiate what the union says would be a fair agreement to end the strike, the cleaners will be picketing at the Ottawa headquarters.

June Winger, National President of the Union of National Defence Employees, pointed out that the firm has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract with the Department of National Defence to provide cleaning services at the Petawawa base, yet the company is looking for more profit which would come at the expense of the cleaners.

The collective agreement between GDI and PSAC expired on April 30.

“GDI is working very hard to have them (cleaners) return to work as soon as possible,” the company noted in an email. “GDI continues to attempt negotiate a fair resolution to the ongoing strike. The next round of negotiations will occur on Thursday August 29, 2019 in Ottawa.”

In the last round of bargaining, the union local negotiated wage increases of $2.25 an hour, so new employees would receive $16.50 an hour, and employees with more than 5 years experience would receive $17 an hour. But the union says GDI has failed to honour that contract.

GDI says it is proposing an immediate increase of $1.25 with wages between $15.75 and $16.75 per hour with raises of 1 per cent at the end of each year of the agreement.

DeSousa said the union wants to continue negotiations and is “cautiously optimistic we can find a resolution.” But she noted that the cautiousness is because the company has not lived up to its previous commitments from the last signed agreement.

PSAC says in the case of the striking commissionaires at CFB Kingston, the workers are looking for better paid sick leave provisions. The union is asking for five paid sick days a year and a better shoe and uniform allowance.

PSAC says the Corps of Commissionaires is refusing to negotiate further and are demanding that the workers accept a deal that they have rejected twice already. “Our bargaining team has presented the Corps with a wide variety of options to create a mutually beneficial agreement to end the strike, but they refuse to budge,” said PSAC’s DeSousa. “They claim they can’t afford to give more, yet what have they done with the money they have saved from the last 8 weeks?”

Rob Howie, a member of the negotiating committee for the union, contends the Corps of Commissionaires already receives enough funds to cover the benefits the union is asking for. According to the union Ottawa area commissionaires earn about six sick days per year for their full-time workers. “We’re not even asking for what Ottawa has. As a matter of fact, many of the benefits Ottawa has are in excess of what we’re asking for,” Howie told the Kingston Whig-Standard.

But Michael Voith, chief executive officer of the Commissionaires in Kingston and the region, said a five-day paid sick leave is unaffordable. He pointed out that the Commissionaires is comprised of 15 independent companies across the country that are in a federation. The organization’s administrative office is in Ottawa.

Voith noted that the two-day paid sick leave offered to the union members is the same as was offered to all of the other more than 500 members of the Kingston Corps, which covers the area east to Cornwall, west to Bomanville and north to Peterborough and Lindsay.

“We’re providing all our employees in the company with two days sick leave,” he explained. “We’re not a government company. We’re a not for profit private sector employer. We’re giving two sick days when most people are not giving any.”

Voith said at this point no negotiations are planned but he is willing to go back to the table. “It’s up to PSAC,” he explained. “They keep coming to the table saying they want five days. What I’ve said over and over again is we can’t afford five days.”

The Canadian Corps of Commissionaires was created to provide employment to Canadian veterans but the organization has non-veteran staff as well.